


winding trails and roads; they all lead back to you

by qiras



Series: reylo week 2018 [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (the skywalker-organa-solos are jewish thanks for coming to my ted talk), F/M, I think that's everything?, Modern AU, Modern magic AU, an ungodly amount of aus, femslash medieval reylo au, lets see...., revolutionary war AU, rey is bad ben is good au, reyloweek2018, smuggler!ben au, tam lin au, they're both jedi au, tw for some discussion of pregnancy and abortion in the tam lin au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14496774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qiras/pseuds/qiras
Summary: in every universe, in every life time, rey and ben will chose each other.written for reylo week 2018 day 7: destiny





	winding trails and roads; they all lead back to you

**Author's Note:**

> i Know it's a day late but you know. and i'm actually really proud of this one, too!

i.

“What girl?” he’d asked, but now, looking at her, he thinks he knows the answer, although he doesn’t know her name. _The_ girl. She’s _the_ girl. Something about her calls to him, and he would almost swear he’s seen her before.

He picks the girl up, carries her in his arms, and looks at her with a strange sort of feeling courses through his veins. Something about her...

She will be important. Nothing in the future is certain or reliable, but this he feels. This he knows. She will be important _to him_ , someday. Someday soon.

ii.

Rey knocks on the door, bottom lip between her teeth. She’s never been to a Passover celebration of any kind before, but her boss invited her. Well. It’s more than just “her boss”. It’s Leia, probably the single best person to ever exist and definitely the closest thing Rey’s ever had to a mother figure of any kind. So of course she’s here, right on time, just like Leia asked, but she’s still nervous as hell. She doesn’t want to do anything wrong.

The door opens to reveal a man she’s never met before, tall and dark and broad, strangely beautiful. He stares down at her, full, pink lips parted slightly. “You must be Ben?” she says, extending a hand. He really looks like a perfect mix of Han and Leia.

“Yes,” Ben says, taking her hand in his, and shit, his hands were big. “Please,” he opens the door wider and steps back, “come on in.”

iii.

She runs through the forest, green skirts held up around her knees, hair held back in a braid, toward the place they said you could meet a monster named Kylo Ren if you looked hard enough. A man appears in front of her, dark and not quite human.

“Why have you come here?” he asks, arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t you know this is my land?”

Rey lifts her chin. “My family owns this land. I have every right to be here.”

“Foolish girl,” he says, but without spite or disdain, “haven’t they told you I can take what I want?”

“You won’t,” she says calmly, simply.

He steps closer, towering over her. “How do you know that?”

The girl refuses to be intimated. “I can see it in your eyes, foolish man,” she says with a twist of her lips. “You don’t want to hurt me. You will not hurt me.”

Kylo Ren licks his lips. “Haven’t you heard,” he says huskily, “other girls tell tales of what I have done?”

Rey shrugs. “They’re lying. I know they are. They are ashamed to have sinned so they compound it with yet another. You have not hurt them,” she asserts.

“And what if,” he says, staring down at her curiously, “you are wrong?”

Rey leans closer to him. He can feel the heat radiating from her body, and his hands ache to touch her. “Well, perhaps I have nothing I am not willing to give you anyway.”

iv.

There have been whispers, rumbles through the Force of a child strong in it and willful. Ben and his uncle have followed the whispers to Jakku, to a scavenger-girl maybe ten years old with tanned skin and scraped knees and scarred body and heart.

“Rey,” she says, still suspicious, when they ask her name.

“Your parents aren’t coming back for you,” he tells her. His uncle smacks his arm. “Ow! What?”

“You could try for a little tact, Ben,” Luke says, eyebrow raised. He turns to Rey and says kindly, “We will leave a message. If they come looking for you, they will know where to find you.”

Rey is still not especially willing to accept this compromise, and Ben can tell, so he says, “We’ll take you back with us. The planet we’re going to is green and has water and you’ll never be hungry again.”

She is still hesitant, but her eyes widen at his last promise. His uncle shoots him a disapproving look, but that doesn’t matter because Rey says, “Do you promise my parents will be able to find me?”

“Yes,” Luke says, but he warns, “I can’t promise they will come for you, Rey.” That doesn’t seem to matter to the girl, eyes wide and trusting as she agrees to come with them, to train to be a Jedi.

He’s glad. For some reason, it’s very important to him. (She’s very important to him.)

v.

“You’re a witch,” says a deep voice behind her.

Rey stiffens and turns around slowly, but says airily, “Well, that isn’t a very nice thing to call someone, now, is it?” The man is tall and broad, with his hands stuffed in his pockets and the buttons of his shirt straining. His long, dark hair covers his ears, and she wonders absently if they’re flushed the same lovely shade of red as his cheekbones.

“No!” he says quickly. “No, I didn’t mean that! I mean... you can do magic. I saw you put that book back without touching it.”

Rey’s heartbeat quickens and she says, mouth dry, “I think you’ve been studying too long. I know it’s finals week, but maybe you should sleep.”

He shakes his head and smiles. “No, I know what I saw. You’re a witch.” And maybe some of the fear shows in her eyes, because he says, “It’s alright. Don’t be afraid. I can do it, too.” And he opens his palm and calls a small, red, flickering light.

Sincerity drips off him like rainwater, and something in his beautiful dark eyes tells her she can trust him. So she extends her hand and summons her own blue light. “I’m Rey.”

He looks up at her through long dark eyelashes. “Ben. Ben Solo.”

vi.

Silver gleams in the sunlight and horses snuffle and shuffle. Princess Breha frowns. Mother will want to hold some sort of celebration for the brave knights returning from war. She hates the knights, hates their grasping hands and arrogance and entitlement, that they think they can place their hands on her body and she’ll belong to them.

But Breha must still stand at her mother’s side and smile at Lord Dameron and Sir Finn, the leaders of this battalion, the latter of whom she actually likes and the former of whom she... tolerates. There is someone new standing between them, someone she doesn’t recognize. They’re quite a bit shorter than Breha, but that doesn’t mean much; she’s very tall, especially for a woman.

They take off their helmet, revealing three dark messy buns at the back of her head. Breha almost gasps at the sight of the girl. She’s never seen anyone this beautiful in her whole life, golden eyes and long eyelashes and pink lips and freckled skin. The girl makes an awkward bow and says, “Your Highnesses,” in an accented, lilting voice. Breha wants to hear her speak again.

“This is the Lady Rey,” Finn says. “She has fought bravely these past battles.”

Rey looks directly and unabashedly at Breha, and the princess’s breath catches in her throat. “How lovely to meet you, Lady Rey,” she murmurs. Perhaps she’s looking forward to her mother’s celebration after all.

vii.

“Aww, you gotta be kidding me,” Ben says, looking at the planet he would imminently be... not _crash-landing_ on, more like... _accidentally descending_ on. Not only did he have to be “accidentally descending,” because that’s not bad enough, but it would be onto a desert planet in the Outer Rim, wouldn’t it? That’s just _perfect_.

He hates deserts. All that sand-- it’s just terrible.

(So maybe he is Anakin Skywalker’s grandson, after all.)

His ship lands in the damned sand fairly softly, all things considered. There’s an old AT-AT nearby that looks like someone’s fashioned it into a shelter of some kind. Ben walks toward it, but it stays eerily silent.

Ben stands in the doorway, looking at the rough planes of existence someone had carved out of this desert, when suddenly, there is cool metal pressed to his throat and someone growls in his ear, “This place is _mine_. Leave it alone.”

“Don’t... want... anything of yours,” he chokes out. “Just trying... to get some help. Accidentally descended my ship.”

The pressure around his neck loosens but doesn’t let up completely. “You mean you’re the one who just crash-landed?”

“Hey, hey,” he says grumpily. “ _Accidentally descended._ Now will you let me go so I can get off this stupid planet?”

She takes the staff from his neck and pushes him forward. Ben turns carefully, hands in the air, to see a young woman maybe twenty years old with her chestnut-brown hair in three buns and her pretty dark eyes still narrowed at suspicion. She’s small, smaller than him for sure, though that’s not saying much, but she really is _small_ \-- not short, but _small_. Her staff is still pointed at him threateningly. He really can’t blame her; he’d certainly be suspicious of everyone if he were in her position, a young woman all alone on a poor desert planet. “Where are you from?”

“Well, that really depends on who you ask and when,” Ben says. When Rey tenses, he amends, “I was born on Chandrila.” His eyes move past her and fall on an old Rebellion helmet, and, taking a bit of a chance (for some reason he feels instinctively that he can trust her), he says, “My mother is Leia Organa.”

Her eyes narrow even more, sharp little needles boring into him. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” He shakes his head and reaches carefully, slowly for his back pocket. “Here,” he says, showing her a medallion, symbol of the Resistance, known even on this backwater planet.

She drops her staff. Not all the way, of course, but it’s no longer pointed at him, and he’ll take that as a victory. “What do you need? I’m good at fixing things.”

“Will you come take a look at my ship?” he says. Then, almost on impulse, he adds, “And when it’s fixed, if you like... you can come with me.”

He expects resistance; there must be some reason she’s been on Jakku with all these tally marks scarring her walls. But instead, she tilts her head and says, “Okay.”

viii.

Rey looks around the house she’s to be stationed in with no small amount of awe. This is certainly richer and more comfortable than anything the patriots have access to. But she must focus. Her mission is a dangerous one, and a long game to be playing, and she could easily be killed were she to be discovered.

So she pastes on a pretty smile and laughs and flirts with the British officers, hoping to find one whose trust she may gain, whose secrets she may pry from them. About halfway through the party, one of the men looks behind her and says, “Ah, Lieutenant Colonel Ren. So glad you could make it.” Rey turns around, and she feels struck when she sees him. She’s never met him before, but she knows him all the same: Ben Solo. He looks just like his father, but with his mother’s coloring. She curtsies, and says, “Kira Johnson. How do you do?”

She extends a hand, and something thrills through her when he takes it. “Very well indeed, I think,” he murmurs, and the electricity throbs higher when he brushes the back of her hand with his lips.

ix.

“What _man_?” she snarls. No one could be allowed to interrupt her search, her burning thirst for vengeance. No one answers her, afraid-- as they should be-- of inciting her wrath.

Kira Ren stalks through a forest on Takodana after this man who dares to think he can interfere with _her_ plans, with _her_ life. When she sees his face through her mask, she can feel her heartbeat in her lips. Then she collapses him and slings him over her shoulder, and her body shivers at the touch.

* * *

Ben comes to her, calls, “Rey,” so softly when their bond opens. He’s shirtless, hair damp, water running in rivulets down his face and arms and chest and abdomen. She tells him not to be stupid, and he finds a towel and starts a fire. She’s careful not to intrude on his space, letting him tell her his story at his own pace as she sits across from him.

Her heart almost breaks when he confesses, eyes low, how alone he’d felt, and she cannot be silent. “You’re not alone,” she promises him. “You aren’t.” 

He looks up at her. “Neither are you,” he says, and he reaches out a hand.

Trembling, she takes her glove from her right hand and reaches forward.

When their fingertips touch, it’s pure magic.

viii.

“I know what you’re doing,” someone murmurs behind her.

Rey jumps, whole body frightened into stiffness. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she says casually.

“You’re a spy,” he says, casually, like he doesn’t hold her life in his hands now. “For the rebels.”

“The _patriots_ ,” she corrects automatically, and she curses herself. Could she be any more _foolish_?

Kylo Ren-- Ben Solo-- whichever one he is-- chuckles, so close to her back that she can feel the heat from his body, can nearly feel the vibrations of his voice. “I will not betray you, _Kira_. But please. Tell me your real name.”

“Rey,” she whispers. “Rey Jinn.” Unconsciously, she leans back and presses herself to his chest, and his hands come up to circle her waist.

vii.

“Shut up,” Rey says, biting her lip to hold back the tears stinging her eyes. Her fists clench and her nails dig into her palms, but she accepts the pain, welcomes it, even. “Don’t say that to me, Ben.”

He looks up at her from where he’s sprawled shirtless against the gray sheets of the captain’s bunk. “Why not? Why can’t I call you that-- cyar’ika?”

“I’m not stupid,” she bites, standing over him at the foot of the bed. The cool metal of the ship’s floor beneath her feet is grounding. She closes her eyes and focuses on it, and on breathing, and says, “I know what it means. _Sweetheart_. _Beloved_.”

But her voice drips contempt when she says those words. There’s nothing of the tenderness and affection they should have. “Then what’s the problem?” he asks, masking the shake in his voice with brashness.

Her eyes fly open and she hisses, “Don’t lie to me. You can’t lie to me. I am not your beloved. We’re just having sex, Ben. You don’t love me.” No matter how she feels, he doesn’t love her. No one has ever loved her.

Slowly, like he’s approaching a wounded animal, he raises his hand to her face and brushes her cheekbone with his thumb, buries his fingers in her hair. “What if I did?”

The tears in her eyes finally spill over, eroding the dam of her self-control. She cries in earnest then, and he sits up, gathers her to his chest. “You don’t mean that,” she sniffles. “You... how can you mean that?”

“How can I not?” he asks tenderly. “I love you, Rey. I love how you insist you’re a better pilot and mechanic than me. I love how you snore a little bit in your sleep. I love how strong you are. I love how soft you are with other people, how bright and friendly and hopeful and loving. I love you.”

Rey cries harder. Her tears melt into his left shoulder and chest, melt her heart and lungs until she can breathe again and she says, “You can call me cyar’ika again if you want.”

“Okay,” he says, rolling her under his body and kissing her.

“I love you,” Rey says.

“I love you,” Ben says, mouth hot against her throat. “Cyar’ika.”

vi.

Lady Rey stands in the center of the floor, bright, jewel-blue dress like a drop of water in a desert. Breha’s back is to the wall, a goblet of cherry wine clutched in her left hand. Her other hand clutches at her scarlet skirts, rubs them over and over again with her thumb, trying desperately to catch a breath that shouldn’t be running in the first place.

Rey looks up, over the heads of the people between them, and smiles at the princess, carving pretty dimples into her cheeks. Breha watches as she turns and says something to Sir Finn, who’s standing right next to her, before moving towards Breha’s corner of the room. She dips into a shallow, awkward curtsey and says, “Your Highness,” in that pretty, accented voice of hers, and Breha’s cheeks warm.

“You don’t need to be formal with me, Lady Rey. You may call me Breha,” she says, tongue thick.

Rey’s eyes sparkle up at her. “I don’t know if that’s proper, Princess.”

“I don’t care,” Breha answers, _maybe too eagerly_ , she thinks, wincing.

“Alright, Breha,” Rey says softly, and a shiver goes through her body at the sound of Rey saying her name. “Please then, call me Rey.”

“Rey,” Breha repeats, and she does not miss the little smile that curls at the corner of Rey’s lips. Maybe she feels it too.

v.

“Benjamin Solo, your mother will have your head for that!” Rey says, hands on her hips

He shrugs unrepentantly. “If she does, maybe Uncle Luke will rediscover his connection to necromancy and revive me.” 

“You’re terrible,” Rey laughs. “Why didn’t you just tell her you’re coming home for Hanukkah instead of leaving her hanging like that? And now she thinks you have a girlfriend besides.”

“Well,” Ben says, looking awkward all of a sudden. “I just said I had to ask what she wants to do. I didn’t say there was a girlfriend.”

“You might as well have,” Rey says, barely looking up from the cauldron as she mixes a potion for Finn’s cold.

“It was true,” he blurts. “I mean... there is someone I have to talk to.”

“Oh.” Rey keeps her eyes fixed on the bubbling potion. “Um. Who is it?” she asks, too brightly.

He inhales sharply. “You.” Rey’s eyes snap up to meet his, but he is staring at a point just beyond her. “I wanted to, uh. Ask you out. If you want to...” Ben looks at her then. “And even if you don’t, I’m not going to leave you alone during the winter holidays! So.”

Rey stands and throws her arms around Ben’s shoulders. “You are amazing, Ben.”

“Are you crying?” he asks, voice panicked.

“Maybe a little. Happy tears,” she promises. “And I would love to go out with you sometime, Ben.”

“Oh,” he says. She giggles at the dazed look on his face, and places a hand on his cheek, then stands on her tiptoes and presses a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. “ _Oh_ ,” he repeats.

Rey laughs again. “Yeah. _Oh_.”

iv.

Ben doesn’t feel that way about her. He _doesn’t_. It’s _Rey_. He’s known her since she was ten years old, since she was chasing other children around, and she’s still not that much older than a child herself. She’s about the age now that he was when they met for the first time.

He hasn’t seen her in years, probably about six, if he remembers correctly. He’d left the temple around then, started working with his mother more, and he hadn’t been back to visit his uncle since then. Uncle Luke had always come to see them instead.

This time, his uncle said he wanted Ben to come back and talk to some of the older Jedi about what options they had outside of continuing to work at the temple. He almost hadn’t recognized Rey, her face and figure filled out, hair pulled back from her face but left down instead of in her customary three buns.

“Hey,” Rey says, knocking at Ben’s door.

“Oh,” Ben says. “Hi.” Rey raises an eyebrow. “No need to sound so thrilled to see me.”

“Sorry,” he winces. “I didn’t mean it like that. What did you need?”

“I want to leave,” she says in a rush. “When you leave, I want to go with you.”

“Oh.”

“Again,” Rey says, a bitter edge to her voice, “you don’t have to sound so thrilled.”

“No, no! I want you to come. Um. With me. I’d like that.” Ben looks at her almost shyly from his seat on his bed.

“I like you,” she says conversationally.

He looks at her dumbly, shakes his head like a dog shaking off water. “I like you too.”

“Good,” she says with a pretty little laugh. “So we’ll get along, then.”

Ben thinks back over the last few sentences. Wait. Did she mean she liked him as a person, or did she mean she had feelings for him?

Rey looks at him mischievously, and he has a feeling he won’t get any more information out of her tonight.

Ah well. What’s life without a little mystery?

iii.

Rey yanks another fistful of herbs from the banks of the river. The mud and plant matter sticks beneath her nails, but she hasn’t got time to care about that now. She roots around in her borrowed apron and closes her hand around the pennyroyal in her pocket and bites her lip. Hopefully that’s enough to make the tincture...

She stands and wipes her hands on the apron. Hopefully Rose wouldn’t mind the mud, but this was very important and she couldn’t have anyone knowing what she was about. The crimson of her dress stands out among the green of the forest, and she hates it. It makes her much too vulnerable to be that visible, and she’s never liked the color of this frock, anyway.

There’s a snapping sound behind her and she freezes, turns slowly, certain she’s about to see a wild animal, but what she sees is maybe worse. Kylo Ren, standing beneath the canopy of green, his face in the shadows. He steps forward toward her, and his fists are clenched. Rey flinches away in fear.

His eyes go wide with hurt and fear of his own. “Are you... is that _pennyroyal_?” he asks, voice harsh.

She lifts her chin. “You know perfectly well what it is, _Kylo Ren_.”

“Why are you trying to kill our child?”

Rey flinches. “Don't you dare,” she says in a low voice. “Don't you dare try and make any choices _for me_. What other option do I have, Kylo? Bear a babe whose father will not marry me? Be outcast from society and my family? Have my child taken from me? And what of the child, a child that may be only half-human? Will it even live? And if it does, what kind of life, what kind of child will it be?” She pants, her breath stolen by emotion.

He looks at her, dark eyes soft, and steps forward again, reaches out a hand to cup her face. “Leave the pennyroyal,” he begs. “Please, Rey. I am human, and I can be saved, and I will marry you, if you’ll have me. I’ll tell you everything, just please. It could hurt you if you take the pennyroyal, Rey. It could kill you. Please,” he repeats. “Please leave the pennyroyal.”

Rey stares at him for a long moment. “You want me?”

“Of course I do. I’ve wanted you in every way it is possible to want someone from the moment I saw you.” “You want our child?”

“How could I not?” Rey takes the pennyroyal from the apron pockets and watches it fall onto the forest floor.

ii.

“Ben,” Leia calls. “Walk Rey home, won’t you? It’s late, and I don’t trust these streets.”

“Of course,” Ben says, and his dark, intense eyes are focused only on Rey. “If I may?” 

“Oh, it’s really not necessary. I only live three blocks away...” Rey stammers.

“Then it’s hardly out of my way at all, I’m sure,” he replies smoothly.

“Okay,” she acquiesces, brows drawing together in slight confusion. She hadn’t gotten the sense he’d particularly _liked_ her, but maybe he just felt it was the decent thing to do. She couldn’t fault him for that.

The first block is a little awkward, but by the second block they’re talking fairly fluently, and by the third block, she’s learned that Ben Solo is actually a very fun person.

“So where do you live?” Rey asks.

“Uh,” he says. “About six blocks that way.” He jerks his head back toward the way they came.

“Oh shit, I was totally out of your way!” Rey brings a hand up to her mouth. “You really didn’t have to walk me home!”

Ben looks down at his feet, mumbles, “Um... I wanted to.”

“Do you want to get coffee sometime?” Rey smiles broadly when he meets her eyes.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

i.

“I've never felt so alone,” Rey says, and she looks to him like she's on the verge of tears.

“You're not alone,” he insists instantly, instinctively. She isn't, and he knows what it is to feel that, but she _isn't_ , and he can't possibly let her think she is.

She looks up at him, and her expression is so soft that were he anyone else, he might hope. “Neither are you,” she says, and she stretches out her hand.

Whole body shaking, he takes off his right glove. His fingertips meet hers, and he sees _everything_.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
